How could a loving God send people to hell? Will people have a chance after they die to believe in Jesus and go to heaven?
With a humble respect for God's Word, Francis Chan
and Preston Sprinkle address the deepest questions you have about eternal destiny. They've asked the same questions. Like you, sometimes they just don't want to believe in hell. But as they write, "We cannot afford to be wrong on this issue."
and Preston Sprinkle address the deepest questions you have about eternal destiny. They've asked the same questions. Like you, sometimes they just don't want to believe in hell. But as they write, "We cannot afford to be wrong on this issue."This is not a book about who is saying what. It's a book about what God says. It's not a book about impersonal theological issues. It's a book about people who God loves. It's not a book about arguments, doctrine, or being right. It's a book about the character of God.
Erasing Hell will immerse you in the truth of Scripture as, together with the authors, you find not only the truth but the courage to live it out.
will immerse you in the truth of Scripture as, together with the authors, you find not only the truth but the courage to live it out.
In 2011 world population will reach 7 billion (vs. 3 billion in 1960). There are now approximately 2.2 billion Christians. Chan and Sprinkle seem to be saying that 4.8 billion people may be facing eternal hell.
ReplyDeleteConcepts of afterlife vary between religions and among divisions of each faith. Not all Christians agree on what happens after death in this life, nor do all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or other believers. Rebirth, resurrection, purgatory, universalism, and oblivion are other possibilities...none of which can be proven.
Mystics of all faiths have more in common than the followers of their orthodox religions. True mystics realize that eternal life is here and now; it does not begin after mortal death. The age of Earth is said to be 4.5 billion years, of the Universe 13.7 billion, yet few humans live to be 100. Relatively, this lifetime is a mere speck.
Scriptures are subject to interpretation; people often choose what is most beneficial for them.
The Bible doesn't have much to say about the afterlife. Most of what we think Jesus said about heaven and hell, in the Gospels, wasn't really about that.
ReplyDeleteThe ancient Jews and the early Christians didn't seem to think much about what occurred immediately following death. You were simply in Sheol which meant "death." The Apostle Paul likened it to sleep.
The ancient Jew thought of the future in terms of "this age" and the "age to come." He would die in this age and be resurrected in the age to come. The resurrection of the dead in the coming age was the early Christian hope. No one, in the New Testament, ever talked about going to heaven when they die. They talked about the coming age, when the Messiah would return, bring heaven to earth, and set everything to right.
The problem with the doctrine of hell, as a place of eternal punishment, is that it presupposes the immortality of the soul which is a Greek rather than a biblical concept. The Bible teaches that immortality belongs only to God and we receive it from him as a gift.
While it is true, that the Bible is interpreted in many ways, there is only one correct interpretation. To find it, we must understand the historical and cultural context. It is when we try to force application of Scripture on situations and circumstances to which it was never intended to apply, that we get these horrid doctrines that have infested the church for centuries.
Its time to take a fresh look at the Scriptures.